With so many social and business networking sites available, how do you keep members coming back to your site?

Creating a members-only area that is of value and interest to your members is a daunting task. It’s not enough to allow members to login and update their contact info or read members-only announcements. You must create a real information exchange with social networking opportunities. Your members-only area must have enough value to entice your members to return – and return on a regular basis.

Hot tips to generate member activity:

1. In addition to allowing members to update their contact information, allow them to post member-to-member news and events that would be of interest to other members. This offers networking and marketing opportunities for your members.
2. Encourage ongoing communication by allowing members to privately message each other.
3. Add a Member Directory that allows members to post a bio or profile their organization, or products and services. Allow your members to post pictures to public or members-only galleries. This gives members a chance to promote their services and generate new business opportunities.
4. Solicit comments and discussion from your members using blogs or forums. With blogs, you start the topics of conversation by posting articles on interesting or controversial topics. With forums, your members can start their own threads.
5. Include news feeds from relevant industry sites that allow members to keep up-to-date on the latest issues, without them having to visit each site individually. This essentially turns your member area into a portal for the latest news/topics of interest to your membership.
6. Let your headlines and updates find your members, rather than the other way around. Use RSS feeds, so that your members can ‘subscribe’ to your website headlines. Alternatively, use regular e-mail digests or notifications to send out teasers or headlines of new postings so that members come back to the site to get the full story.
7. Create a dynamic ‘Welcome’ page once visitors login to your members-only area. It should act as a switchboard, directing them to the various items in your members-only area. It can include "hot" or current items like:
• Most recent members-only news postings
• Upcoming events
• Latest member-to-member news
• Their membership status with an automatic renewal option
• News feeds from third party sites that feature current industry news
• Most recent forum postings

Keeping your member-area updated and content-rich can be a daunting and time-consuming task. The above ideas not only keep your site current and interesting, they can be automated or member-driven, thus freeing up your staff’s valuable time.